


and I am alive

by Rehearsal_Dweller



Series: Learning Normal, Finding Home [8]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-24
Updated: 2013-11-24
Packaged: 2018-01-02 13:52:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1057546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rehearsal_Dweller/pseuds/Rehearsal_Dweller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Nico needs reassurance that his loves, his family, are alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and I am alive

**Author's Note:**

> This ended up a little sadder than I'd meant it to. Sorry.  
> Don't worry though, nobody we love dies or anything.

You wouldn't know it looking at him, but Nico's a very touchy person. When he gets close to people, not before. Once he knows you, once he cares, it's constant. Subtle, but constant.

He spent so much time with the dead, before. Sometimes he just needs the reassurance that his family, his loves, are alive.

Way back when his circle of loved ones had included Hazel, Percy, Jason, and pretty much nobody else (Reyna wasn't one for non-romantic physical affection that didn't involve some kind of hitting, a characteristic she shared with Clarisse, and at the time Nico and Annabeth weren't quite _there_ yet, they hadn't quite fallen into the easy friendship that started from shared frustration and affection for Percy), it was easier. 

He fell asleep on Jason and Percy's couch, flat on his face like always, and Percy sat on his legs, because that's what Percy does. Only in the morning Nico woke up and Percy had fallen asleep, and Nico didn't dare move. He just lay there, feeling Percy's breathing, his heartbeat, because for one heart stopping moment, he saw that Percy wasn't moving and he nearly, nearly started to panic. 

Jason was already more adjusted to casually touching Nico, which when Nico thought about it was kind of strange, since Percy had known him longer. Jason was good at reminding Nico that he was alive, in any case.

Hazel was easy, because Hazel understood. Nico had seen her do the same things, more subtly. The watching someone breathe, the checking for a pulse, the making sure they're still warm and not dead cold. She was dead for a while, after all. 

After that much time spent with dead people, you don't take for granted that the people around you are living.

It all got more complicated when he and Annabeth got closer, because even then at first he wasn't quite sure what to make of her. The way they interacted wasn't quite how he interacted with anyone else. 

(To this day it isn't, to this day Nico doesn't quite know how to handle her. From the day they met and she fell off a cliff to the first time she grabbed him by the front of his shirt and kissed him to this moment right now, she's been a mystery to him. Only nowadays, it's a mystery he's willing – trying – to solve.)

Looking back, Nico's pretty sure it was a sign that none of the string of people he'd tried to date in college had inspired that same compulsion to be _sure_ as Percy, as Annabeth, as Jason or Hazel. It wasn't that he didn't care, but it also sort of was.

And then there was an _infant_ in their lives, but Percy and Annabeth still wanted Nico around. So much so that when Nico visited just a few days after she was born, Annabeth sat him down on the couch and put the newborn into his arms, showing him just how to hold her.

“Annie, I don't know if this is a good idea,” he said, frowning down at the tiny child he was holding.

“Shut up, you have to know how to hold her properly,” Annabeth replied, fixing his arms so he supported Marina's head better.

“It's not like I'll be doing it _regularly_ ,” protested Nico.

“Yes you will be,” Annabeth declared firmly, then adjusted his elbow again.

It was kind of terrifying, holding Marina. Then and every time after. She shone so brightly, with her soul all whole and unbroken. He could feel her little heart beating, her tiny lungs working, and when she opened her eyes and blinked up at him, not quite focused, it was – he doesn't actually know the word. If there is one. Some kind of synonym-hybrid of amazing and upsetting and brilliant and scary, probably.

He knows, he _knows_ there aren't words for the feeling from the day that Percy told him they were having another baby and that they wanted him, Nico, to stay and be a real, permanent part of their lives, practically in one breath.

He almost didn't believe it, in the moment.

Didn't, really, until they brought him along to look at houses. Until they handed him a roller and a tray of charcoal grey paint and set him to work in the room that would be his as soon as they finished with it.

(Of course that meant he wouldn't be falling asleep facedown on that old couch anymore, wouldn't have Percy dozing off while watching TV and waking up to some degree on top of Nico. Only it didn't really stop happening, just now they'd fall asleep side-by-side, heads falling onto each other's shoulders, and Annabeth _totally_ keeps a folder on her computers full of stealth phone pictures of the two of them dozing on the couch.)

And then again he found himself sitting on a couch with a baby in his arms and Annabeth next to him.

“How come he stops crying when she hands him to you?” Percy asked, flopping onto the free part of the couch.

“Because unlike a certain son of the sea god I could mention, I am capable of stillness,” Nico answered easily, without even looking up from Bobby's tiny face.

Marina crawled into Annabeth's lap and stuck her head between Bobby's head and Nico's. “He's so tiny.”

Annabeth gently pulled the two-year-old back. “You know, that's what Nico said about you the first time he saw you. And several times after.”

“B'I'm not tiny,” Marina protested.

“You were, once,” said Nico. “Just like Bobby.” He shifted the infant in his arms a little so that Marina could see his face without putting hers too close. “And your mama made me hold you, just like this. It was scary and amazing, all at once.”

“How come?” asked Marina.

“Because holding a baby – it's a whole life, a whole entire person, right in your arms,” Nico explained. He passed the baby over to Percy and let Marina crawl into his lap. He took her little hand in his and put it over her heart, then his. “Because you can feel their heart beating and their lungs moving air, and they can't take care of themselves. I can sort of feel it all the time from everyone, but when they're close like that, dependent – it's terrifying, but beautiful.”

Marina frowned and leaned over toward her little brother again, slowly. She reached out one hand and gently laid it on his chest, feeling for a tiny heartbeat.

Annabeth had an odd expression on her face as she watched Nico and Marina.

It wasn't until a long time later that he quite understood what that was, and he probably wouldn't have if she hadn't been giving him the same look the day after the first time someone Marina and Bobby knew – were friends with – from Camp got really hurt by a monster. It was the look she wore when she said, “You're good at that, Nico. Great, even. Who'd have thought _you'd_ be so good with kids?”

And then Percy laughed. “Didn't _you_ , Annabeth? Way back when he first moved in? I remember, you said it when everybody was all worried that we had a son of Hades living with babies in the house: _he's better at all of this than Percy is, so shut up.”_

“Well, that's still true,” Annabeth replied. “You are better at parenting than Percy I-cheered-when-my-son-blew-up-a-water-fountain-in-my-workplace Jackson almost all of the time.”

Percy winced (it hadn't been that long since that whole incident, he was still in trouble). “I didn't _cheer_.”

It wasn't much longer after, the first morning when Nico woke up before the sun and listened to Percy snoring and watched the slow, silent rise and fall of Annabeth's chest (because unlike _some_ people, she's capable of breathing quietly while sleeping). He didn't stay and watch them long, though. Too long. Maybe forty minutes, which maybe is too long to be called not long. Who cares. Anyway, he rose and dressed and went downstairs to start making pancakes, because everyone loves pancakes.

He'd only been downstairs maybe twenty minutes when Marina appeared in the kitchen doorway, looking like she'd barely slept at all.

“Is everything okay?” Nico asked.

Marina shook her head.

“Is this still about Della?”

(Della Watson, Jason and Thalia's half-sister, born not long after the Giant War, Marina's mentor at Camp, dead at 14 just days ago. A tough reminder for her siblings and cousins that children of the Big Three didn't usually get to live so long, and that they should have died a long, long time ago. A tougher one for Marina and Bobby, who'd never lost anyone like this yet.)

She nodded, sniffling.

“Come here.”

Marina ran forward and threw her arms around Nico, without a moment's hesitation, like she'd been waiting for an invitation to do it. Her ear was pressed to his chest, like she was listening to his heartbeat.

Actually – _oh._

“Did you feel her die, daddy?” Marina mumbled. “Could you feel it?”

For a moment, Nico wasn't sure what to say.

“I – I did,” he said finally. “But do you remember the first thing I did when we got the call from Camp?”

“You went around to everybody and you -” she pulled her upper body away from Nico's, reaching up and pressing her fingers to the side of his neck like he'd done, then moving her hand to his chest and watched it move as he breathed. “- like that.”

“Why?”

“B-because they're alive. We're alive.”

“Right.”

“But can't you tell that? Like, feel it without touching them?”

“I could. Why do you think I didn't?”

“Because it's – it's reassuring,” Marina said. “To be able to reach out and touch them and feel that they're still there.”

Nico nodded. “It's hard right now. Losing the people you love never stops being hard. But _we_ are alive. And given what we are – sometimes that hast to be enough.”

 


End file.
